White Nights

Have you lived or not? Look, one says to oneself, look how cold the world is growing

In two minutes you have made me happy for ever.

. . Good-bye, thank you! . . . ”

“Surely . . . surely you don’t mean . . . that we shall never see each other again? . . . Surely this is not to be the end?”

“You see,” said the girl, laughing, “at first you only wanted two words, and now. . . . However, I won’t say anything . . . perhaps we shall meet. . . . ”

You . . . perhaps it was my fancy

A SENTIMENTAL STORY
FROM THE DIARY
OF A DREAMER

heart was fluttering like a captured bird.

She’s a girl, and I am sure she is dark,”

true that I live in a very remote part of the town. I walked along singing, for when I am happy I am always humming to myself like every happy man who has no friend or acquaintance with whom to share his joy.

And you grieve that the momentary beauty has faded so soon never to return, that it flashed upon you so treacherously, so vainly, grieve because you had not even time to love her....

I took long walks, succeeding, as I usually did, in quite forgetting where I was